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POP VIEW; The Jazz Festival Revisits Itself

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When the JVC Jazz Festival rolls into town, as it does this Friday, it usually sets critics off in a head-scratching flurry: what, they wonder, is the state of jazz, expecting the festival to produce some answers. Because it's the largest American jazz festival and takes place in a city where jazz is a substantial part of the cultural scene, it has signficance. And it can provide some answers.

If we believe what this year's festival is telling us, the jazz world has become lackluster. The order of the day is the tribute, the re-creation and the just plain dusty -- a bad sign.

Here are some shows that prove the point: there will be two tributes for Dizzy Gillespie, who deserves it, though he has been celebrated regularly over the last year in honor of his 75th birthday. There will be one for John Coltrane, who has also been feted a lot lately; one for Stan Getz, who died last June, and likewise for the trumpeter and band leader Buck Clayton, who died in December. Clifford Brown is honored by a mediocre jazz trumpeter, Arturo Sandoval, who is paired with Thelonious Monk's son. Lionel Hampton gets an evening, and Gerry Mulligan is recreating the 1949 Birth of the Cool session, which featured Miles Davis, with a 10-member group.

Not that most of this will be bad, given the caliber of the people performing. And tributes in themselves aren't wrong; they've occasionally offered up some terrific music. But there's a blandness and predictability to the schedule, a trotting out of all the same suspects to perform the same old roles.

Where are the combinations of musicians that bring something new to the story? Where are the little signs that show that the festival's programmers know what's going on in the clubs, know the history of the music, know which musicians have special works locked up in a drawer somewhere, works that would make for thrilling and revelatory listening? And where are the new faces, the young musicians to be put on stage with the older ones, making it clear that jazz has some continuity?

The forthcoming festival, which runs through June 27, is a retreat. Last year's event, one of the best in a decade, included a host of young musicians; festival organizers were acknowledging that a mainstream jazz renaissance had occurred and they had to begin grooming younger musicians. That doesn't exist this year, with only a few exceptions. This exclusion is programming suicide: it keeps young musicians from learning how to deal with larger halls and keeps audiences from being introduced to new faces and ideas.

But the grayness coursing through the festival seems endemic to much of the jazz world at the moment. The growth of jazz over the last decade is slowing simply because there has been a startling lack of imagination on the part of just about everyone involved in the music, from concert producers and record companies to critics, musicians and audiences. It's no wonder that the music is often not taken seriously, given the sloppiness of the productions (granted, often because of jazz's limited economic base) and the redundancy of some performances.

And though the state of jazz can't continue to languish, change hasn't happened yet. In clubs, still hothouses for innovation, where musicians can show off their intellectual finery, the music can be immensely exciting. But more often, musicians run through the same tunes the same way, accentuating a sense of stasis. It is as if the entire culture is suffering a momentary intake of breath before the assault on the top of the mountain is taken on.

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Even the thrill of the new, in the form of ranks of aspiring musicians arriving in New York, has cooled. After a decade of influx that shows no sign of receding, the expectation that should greet young musicians isn't there anymore. Having signed up all the promising musicians, labels can't deal with the next generation because of their limited resources. And the young musicians themselves aren't progressing as fast as they should; promise, in some cases, is in the process of wilting. In the mid-1980's, it was important to have generations dedicated to learning the fundamentals of jazz. But now that there are hundreds of musicians capable of playing mainstream jazz proficiently, it seems time to emphasize the art over the craft.

There are easy ways out of the problem. For every 10 mundane, badly produced jazz records, there is a record like Joe Henderson's perfectly produced "Lush Life, the Music of Billy Strayhorn" -- thoughtful, carefully experimental and cross generational. For every routine concert, there are the occasionally brilliant shows at Lincoln Center, where new ways of looking at old subjects get explored and where old and young musicians mix it up.

For every club show of endless solos, there can be an exhilarating performance like that of the drummer Art Taylor's group, meticulously arranged and conceived and also cross generational. Or events like the monthlong Dizzy Gillespie tribute at the Blue Note in which a different period from his career was featured each week. And that's nothing compared to the fecundity to be found at the margins of jazz and new music, where ideas flourish faster than ability and tradition plays a much smaller role.

Part of this generally rundown mood may stem from comparisons to what's happening elsewhere within jazz. Young musicians like Bobby Watson and Wynton Marsalis are working a deft balance between composition and improvisation, and at the same time have retained a dedication to swing. In the process, they have made mainstream jazz an experimental form again, leaving the standard theme and variation of most small-group jazz sounding limited. As for programming, the imagination shown by Lincoln Center's new season, which starts in August, with its thematic programming and its attention to history, leaves most other programs looking shabby. What might have passed as workable several years ago now comes off as drab.

The point is fairly simple: the jazz world has to start looking outside the jazz world for ideas. Young musicians have to figure out how to get beyond the standard forms without losing the essence of improvisation and swing. Jazz record producers and the people at labels who sign young talent have to start going to clubs to find what's there, who's doing what.

It is the right time. Institutional support for mainstream jazz is greater than ever, there are probably more young jazz musicians learning their skills than at any time since the early 1960's, and there is more exposure to the music than there has been for 20 years. There are even hints of a new direction being offered by some musicians. It's now up to the packagers and the producers to take advantage of the situation; the frame of the music should be at least as creative as the music itself. The lack of foresight puts jazz back where it has been for most of the century, at the back of the bus, a second cousin to the culture it represents.

A version of this review appears in print on June 14, 1992, on Page 2002022 of the National edition with the headline: POP VIEW; The Jazz Festival Revisits Itself. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe